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OK, I would never have considered the Gold Monster as a coin detector. Micro jewelry maybe, but coin detecting? Well, in the U.K. most detecting is "dig all non-ferrous" and there is a need for sensitivity to small items because Celtic gold and cut silver coins are small targets. Still, I was quite surprised to see this posted on the Minelab Facebook page. Food for thought for owners of the GM1000.

Hi All, This is my first post :) I wanted to share my experience as a novice. My daughter and I were watching a you tube Video on gold detecting and we decided that it would be a fun thing to do together. So I went and spoke to a dealer and he suggested the GM1000. There was only the one review at the time that was very positive. Four/ five months later and I have been out six times with my new GM1000 to Various locations within the golden triangle , All I had to show from it was a crap load of junk and a heap lead shots. I started seeing more reviews pop up so naturally I was reading/watching the reviews on the GM. ( a lot weren’t good) I started to doubt myself and my machine. So I decided I need to go out with someone to tell me what I am doing wrong and to see if I had wasted my money. Via Facebook I discovered someone and went out with him for the day. He restored my faith in it and I learnt to trust the detector. The other thing I learnt was how to run it in manual successfully. After the training I went out again and it finally happened . I found the yellow stuff , Not just one bit either. Now I can’t retire on the two little bits (0ne .4g and the other .2g) However God it feels bloody good ! Now I do plan on getting a PI detector at a later stage when funding permits however in the mean time I can now know that the GM can do what it was sold to me as. Good luck everyone! Rob

Isn't there supposed to be an owners manual that comes with this detector besides that little "Getting Started Guide"?------How long does that rechargeable battery pack run on the GM1000 with a full charge & under "normal" hunting conditions?------How long does it take the battery pack to charge (AC plug in charger) when the battery is flat?-------Didn't see any info in that starting guide in regard to this.------I wish they would have made the shafts longer! LOL (I'm kiddin)-------I'm about 5'9" and I got plenty hanging off the back when adjusted for me.------So far, what little I have tested it, I'm really liking the detector although I haven't even had it on a hunt yet.-----If you've got any advice for me on this detector--I'm all ears!-------I've been reading up on what I can find on it.--------Thanks----------Del

I let Ben use his gold monster where I knew for 100% positive we had small crystals fall of the bigger one. WARNING - foul language and MUST SEE Mlgdave

My last outing everything seemed to be fighting me - weather, equipment, and deep grass. Only managed a few dinks, 14.7 grains or 0.96 gram. All found with the Gold Monster 1000 and 10" coil except the smallest, flattest one. I decided to give the 5" coil another go. I rarely use it and with the reports on coil sensitivity issues I wanted to revisit it again to see if I am imagining things. Scrubbing the ground the coil was quiet at manual sensitivity 5 and the rocks started bleeding through at 6. This was not touch sensitivity - just that having the coil on the rocks would start giving a little mineral response from them at 6. My 5" coil does not exhibit any signs of actual knock sensitivity until I run it up to manual sensitivity 9 or 10. Even then it is no worse than I experience with my Gold Racer, for instance, when cranked all the way up. I have no way to know but I suspect at least some of what is being reported as touch sensitivity is the detector popping on mineralized rocks, which can happen at fairly low sensitivity levels with the 5" coil. If a coil is fine in low mineral ground and then exhibits "touch sensitivity" in more mineralized ground this is probably the case, as true knock sensitivity should exhibit no matter what the ground mineralization is. Genuine touch sensitivity is triggered even by grass or sticks which are not detectable. Anyway, the little flat nugget, third from right, was detected with 5" coil at sensitivity setting of 5. One nice thing is that the little coil is easier to run in deep grass than the 10" coil and that's where this little guy was found. I am NOT saying that nobody is having issues with the Gold Monster touch sensitivity. My unit is like a just prior to actual production model however and I am just not seeing it. That being the case my final comment on the issue is if it is happening to you, it sure is not happening to everybody and so there should be a fix simply by replacing the coils or detector or both. However, if it is a case of running hot and eliciting responses from the ground or rocks by doing so, it will never get sorted out. I do sympathize with those having problems and hope it gets fixed via your dealer or Minelab or both. One last note. I was trying both my Gold Bug 2 with 6" coil and Gold Monster with 5" coil on some quartz specimens I have from Alaska last night. They were originally found with a Gold Bug 2 and 6" coil. My method at the time was to visually find quartz specimens and then manually rotate them over the coil. This is because some of the gold in them is so tiny that the thickness of the rock blocks the signal and so the rocks often need to be rotated just right to get a faint little gold hit. This is complicated by the need to keep my hand away from the coil since these hot detectors will pick up a person's hand because we are faintly conductive (blood saline and sweat salts). Anyway, the GB2 with 6" coil and GM1000 with 5" coil are really a match for detecting tiny gold in samples like this. The main difference is the Gold Bug 2 signal tends to fade away in a more linear fashion, whereas the Gold Monster 1000 tends to remain louder and then drop off very quickly. Click or double-click for larger photo size...

Here is another video. Some of the same stuff you might have seen already but some different footage in there too.. Shortly after the 4 minute mark if you listen close you will hear a guy ask how it does for prospecting. Paraphrasing here, but the rep said its better then the 705 but probably not as good as the Monster. I think that is a much more complicated question to answer but interesting anyway... Another thing I couldn't quite make out but I think the rep said there was NO Multi Freq in Prospect mode. (Don't quote me on that one) I did hear in another video that each mode has a specially tuned Multi Frequency.... There is a good closeup of the new pinpointer at the end too.. I wish they would have fired it up so you could hear it but they didn't.. here it is:.

I took a friend out for a couple days in central Nevada to some hard rock mines (just got back). He got his first gold specimen with a GB2 within a couple hours, several more afterward and some more really nice ones the following day. I got some nice pieces using the Gold Monster 1000. The GM100 is actually a really good machine on the dumps for picking out specimens. The very effective discrimination did a fine job of eliminating all the nails and other bits of iron trash so common in old hard rock dumps. Look for a more detailed article on using the GM 1000 to scan old hard rock dumps maybe as a treasure Talk feature or in the ICMJ magazine or both . Hard rock mines are overlooked by many prospectors and they have real potential. Its interesting that we got both pieces where the gold was quite yellow and others where it was silver rich and very much in the electrum range. The gold rich stuff tended to be more platy and the silver rich electrum was more wiry. Fun to pick this kind of thing off an old mine dump - this is a nice specimen of wiry, silver rich electrum gold - the gold comes out the back side of the specimen as well, so it goes clear through. You know the old miners didn't intend to throw this stuff away.

The odd thing is some GM 1000 work great out of the box. Then others have trouble with the small coil. But then you have people like me and a few others have trouble with both coils. It would be interesting to know if Minelab has more than one plant where GM 1000 comes together. Then too if Minelab had to buy their electronics from another company that could of been substandard without knowing it. This wouldn't be the first time a top name company got the shaft unknowing what they were buying was substandard. How many of you have sent your GM 1000 in to Minelab ? Chuck

So I rolled the dice and picked up a Monster even though I am well aware of the potential coil problems. I know Steve, Chris, and many others who are vastly more experienced than myself have reviewed the detector but I thought I'd document my first six hours of use here as I am more of a novice. Things I Like: Build quality - most of the photo's online make this almost look like a child's toy, fortunately, that couldn't be further from the truth and I really love the cam-lock system. Not quite as portable - or quickly deployed - as say the SDC, but I can break it down and fit it and the SDC in a 30L weekend pack. Very adaptable. Automatic ground tracking - As a fairly new prospector I love this for one reason - it eliminates the human element of error. I can use old standbys like the GB II fairly well, adjusting with my thumb as I go, and doubtless manual ground balancing is an edge under certain circumstances, but occasionally my mind wanders and needless to say I know personally I'm not getting optimal depth 100% of the time with manual ground balance. Speaker volume - love the adjustments here; I can dial it down when in the middle of nowhere or crank it when working near water (Headphones see below.) Iron/Gold Probability - I dug probably 200+ targets in six hours, the only time the discrimination was off initially was on a few square nail bits, and it pegs very strong gold on graphite hunks. All hot rocks I encountered swung to the iron probable side occasionally crossing over a little. Things I don't like: Lack of 1/4" headphone jack - I like using headphones and while I can get an adapter for the 3.5, my favorites are 1/4" and it's just one more cog in the works to bug out. Threshold - this is going to take some getting used to. I actually ran most of the time in auto+ just to get some noise. All in all I am happy - I'll probably honestly keep this as my sole gold VLF and sell off the others. It's still a new machine, but I have not experienced any of the falsing or bump issues that seem to be so prevalent here on the web. I have ZERO issues with tracking out targets - as long as you maintain a wide, slower, swing speed over the target it doesn't seem to be an issue.

Steve I just bought the monster 1000 have you work AZ yet with your 1000

Having a bit of fun with the GM 1000 so thought I might chronicle my finds in the one spot (if that's allowed??). Went out this afternoon with the literal dog, the figurative dog and the 3 hounds (the kids ). Took the GM to a spot where I had been before with the SDC and the Zed and had never found anything but rubbish. Old quartz vein site that had been pretty well smashed by the old boys. Lots and lots of targets with a little bit of sign of previous detectorists but I am assuming they were put off by the rubbish too. Today I strapped on the big coil for a bit of a change. Have almost exclusively used the little fella as I think it's a bit more stable and sensitive - although I have absolutely nothing to back that up with. A few small pieces of lead and a bit of ? tin. And one nice little specie ?? Also had a bit of a noise in the quartz wall but it was hard to get close enough so will be heading back there with the little coil to get a better swipe at it. Only out for about 45 mins so plenty more to this story (hopefully )

Here's a question to the GM owners .... will large coil still pick up down to 1 grain tiddlers? (at the surface) Or is that where you need to switch over to the 5" coil? Thx all.

We went up to an old wash site on a shape ridge and I got a good reading on a rock out crop. I dug down and found a nice picker about two inches in the dirt and rock. I went over the hole and got another reading. Another picker. I kept doing this until got about 6" down. I got 9 pieces that weighs 3.9 gram. It was at the end of the day and my battery was down. I will go back another day and tear that top of the ridge apart. There will be more gold in that area. I am about to put my Gold Bug II away for a while, but never sell it.

The battery door of the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 has a loop of steel wire that acts as a safety to keep the door from getting lost. I needed a temporary fix for another problem and stole the loop off my GM1000. The wire loop looked like it might be handy for many things, and I vaguely remembered seeing them someplace. Finally tracked it down as a keychain or luggage tag loop. Picked up a pack of 20 on Amazon for just $7.49 including shipping. For 0.37 each it just seemed like something I could use in my tool box.

This subject has been mentioned before here but it seems some people are having issues that may go beyond the "norm", whatever that is. See Bill Southern's forum at http://nuggetshooter.ipbhost.com/topic/30883-mike-c-falsing-fix/ My 5" coil starts to exhibit touch sensitivity at Manual Sensitivity level 9, becoming more pronounced at 10. I have had no issue of note with my 10" coil, which is the coil I use almost exclusively. My impression has been this touch sensitivity in the 5" coil is inherent in the High Gain/Audio Boosted design of the GM1000. For me the solution had been to either lower the Gain/Sensitivity or to just get down and dirty with coil control. See my post from May at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/3614-understanding-the-sensitivity-control-on-the-gold-monster-1000/?do=findComment&comment=39955 as regards all this. Any experienced detectorist knows a loose coil cable near the coil can create problems, and Mike Conner has suggested affixing the coil cable on the 5" coil as firmly as possible to prevent movement in the cable, with what he reports as being good results. This has been a non-issue for me as I run the 10' coil almost exclusively and my sensitivity when in manual ranges between 6 - 8 with rare forays to higher levels as described in my recent thread here. My main concern is reports of 5" coil touch sensitivity at much lower Gain/Sensitivity levels than what I have experienced. So the big question for you Gold Monster owners (no second hand reports please) - what coil sensitivity are you experiencing and at what Gain/Sensitivity level does it start to exhibit with each coil? Have you tried more firmly affixing the lower cable to the rod, and has it helped?

Thought I would post on how I modified a GPX shaft to make it a little more compact. I cut roughly 6" off the end and drilled 7 more holes in the shaft so the lower poll would go further up into the upper shaft. Now my Monster shortens up to about 30" and extends to 4 feet. I now have lots of adjustment options from extra short to full length. I also picked up an extra lower poll to keep the second coil mounted. Changing coils is a pet peeve of mine so I like to keep it quick and simple. I've been on 4 short hunts now with this setup and can't be more happy.

I purchased a Golden Mask telescoping rod with the intent of using it for my Deus HF elliptical coil. XP placing the battery in the trapezoidal lower rod section however made an adaptation more trouble than it is worth for something I am not sure I will keep anyway. I decided to repurpose it instead to the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 in an attempt to make it as easy as possible to collapse down and put in a rucksack. The arm cup removal is easy. Just remove the bolts. The grip/handle however is both screwed together and glued. Have to give them credit - beautifully made rod assembly. Some heat from a hair dryer and careful prying got the grip assembly off the rod. The upper rod is thicker than the standard rod diameter and so the neat little clamps Minelab includes with the GM1000 will not work. Instead standard hose clamps will serve until I get some that fit better. The upper rod is not quite long enough to get the proper spacing for the armrest, so this is a mockup until I find a short piece of rod the correct diameter to install in the upper rod for a little extra length. Roughly 30" long when collapsed. The coil needed to be shimmed with an extra rubber washer. I used the skinny little Golden Mask plastic bolt but will drill the isolator rod out to accommodate the Minelab bolt later. Near final product, with way more length fully extended than I need at my height of 5'11" but that is good for working overhead cut banks and poking around in the brush. Click all photos for larger versions. Once I get the rough edges finished this will be a sweet little backpacker unit.

I just found this video about the GM-1000, One thing that I have noticed about the GM all along is that it has a fairly fast GB system and this can work against a person, Anyone who has owned certain Whites machines will already know the effects that a very fast GB system can have on target response which is why most of us who own or have owned such machines prefer to work in fixed / or lock the tracking, I have always thought that Minelab's tracking systems have always been a bit on the lazy side when it comes to speed where as Whites tracking systems can GB them selves within One or Two pumps of the Coil, The GM has about the fastest tracking system ever fitted to a ML machine and I think this is why loyal ML users are having trouble with the GM, because in some settings it will track out targets where as some Whites machine will hold on to some targets when in the Tracking mode, So if you find that signals keep vanishing with your GM just stop swing over the target and ground balance over a fresh piece of ground to your right or left of you and then re-sweep over the target area, The GM machine is not alone in this tracking out the target and it is not a fault in the machine either, It is doing what a tracking system is meant to do in tracking out the ground and if there is a target in that ground then it will be tracked out, This is why many of the testers have said that "Once you have found a Target" that you should sweep past the target so the GB systems stays focused on the ground and surrounding area and not the Target, In this video you will see and hear what happens when you keep swishing the Coil over the targets and see and hear it vanish before your eyes, This is very important for you Lads and Lasses who swing them big ML thumpers that ground balance at sun up and sundown, The Gold Monster is a rocket ship in comparison, Not as fast as some but quicker than most anyways I hope this helps, John.

Hi everyone Well I did buy a goldmonster 1000 :D Thankyou Luckystrikegold.com.au for all your help Now i havent done much with it yet. I don't seem to be able to detach my sdc2300 from myself Anyway My brother Tony has given it a couple of goes.. One spot he cleaned up what gold he could with his gpx5000 and sdc2300 He managed to find two tiny pieces with the GM1000 there. one piece of gold with each coil.. He found the Discrimination worked well.. although this monster will ping the hot rocks.. this spot was full of Hot rocks! It would tune some out after swinging a few times over the hot rock, some hot rocks persisted!! Tony found the more he used the GM1000 the more he liked it.. he said if the sensitivity is turned up too far It made the GM1000 noisy. He also found that at times if you swung too fast the GM1000 couldnt keep up. Was no problem though, just slow your swing speed down. :D As he was using it.. he noticed that he could tell what would be junk or not. Well almost :lol: those shotty pellets could even fool the GM1000 .. we think it depended on the shape and size of those darn shot pellets The rust at this other spot . we didn't put it in the thick of those tins and rust.. Bit of over kill the discrimination worked really well. Where there was the odd larger rusty can or flakes of rust Can you see the Gold?? More playing with it too be done.. would I use it full time.. no ... as i still prefere my PI machines The GM1000 Is another tool for cleaning up where we know there is tiny shallow gold to be had.. Its lightweight, easy too use.. Part 2 Hi all Well it was bloody freezing here yesterday.. the sun was nice, the darn wind cut through like it was coming straight off the south pole brrrrrr.. so we didn't detect lol Today we did though Took the goldmonster for a walk over near some of those tin cans and rust Going through the old timers camp.. as you know over time thier tin cans travel far and wide Tiny flakes of rust everywhere Plus there was an blacksmith at this camp as well.. horse shoes and nails I had first go with it We didnt have it in discrimination mode.. using the 10x6 coil, on mild ground, granite sand, greenstone, quartz, and the odd laterite.. also just watched the gold side of the scale. The sensitivity set at 6 It liked a button.. pellets.. A bottle top.. an old bit of a light When we swung it over the small bits of rust the scale went to the left.. so we knew it was junk.. We could see the rust as well lol All i could get was the pellets and rust.. oh and the button Then Mike had a turn Walking around through the old timers camp. Nope reckons thats junk. More junk.. more junk.. oh look a big piece of junk.. a bully beef tin lol Then he says.. have a different sound here... the gm1000 reckons this may be gold " i said it reckoned the pellets were gold as well lol" it was Gold alright this time.. he found his first piece of gold with the GM1000 today a point 2 of a gram I didnt take a picture of all the junk we dug up.. it loves those shotty pellets! So we have the old bit of a light, from a car i guess. Couple of bits of lead.. a button.. the bottle cap, and the gold sitting on top of it. I reckon for the $$$$ its not a bad little VLF machine.. it loves shotty pellets, actually all non ferrous ojbects. Lol I may find a gold sovereign one day! Cool..... I can only hope.

I am just back from a little detector outing and while I was at it I reflected on how once again I seem to do things a bit differently than other people. I am usually shy of talking about my specific settings because I am the last person to claim I know what's best when it comes to other people and how they detect. Ground conditions vary as do people's personal styles and preferences. Therefore I will include my usual caveat here that I am not claiming what I am doing is "the best" way of doing things. On the other hand I do seem to be able to make detectors deliver for me and I am willing to share how I do things in case it may help somebody else. Hopefully that proves to be the case with this post. For me the key is knowing my detector and how it reacts on my ground. I then let the detector tell me what to do when it comes to balancing sensitivity and ground responses. The task at hand has a lot to do with it. The Minelab Gold Monster 1000 is from my perspective two different detectors in one package. There are two basic tasks I usually expect to perform with it: 1. I have an acre of ground I want to detect from end to end. This for me requires using the larger of the two coils included with the GM1000, a blunt tipped 10" DD elliptical. Due to the GM1000 being a very high gain detector in more ways than one, my basic goal here is stability. I want the machine to be well behaved so that I can cover ground relatively quickly without having to deal with spurious false signals that require analysis. I am going to sacrifice a little theoretical "hots" in order to efficiently cover large areas, areas that may or may not contain gold. 2. I have a 20 foot by 20 foot area that I already know has small gold in it. My goal here is not to cover ground but to clean out the gold. This will at minimum mean running the Gold Monster as hot as possible, and may very well include going to the smaller of the two coils, a 5" round DD. However, I can find gold down around the 1/10th grain (480 grains per Troy ounce) region with the 10" coil and it will hit the larger bits at greater depth in milder ground so I am generally going to stick with the 10" coil unless I really am trying to get the very last flyspecks. What follows is predicated on the moderately mineralized ground of northern Nevada, where alkali (salt) ground is as much or more a consideration as small hot rocks. Even small depressions like a hoof print will collect water during a rain, and when almost but not completely dried the small damp spot may create a positive signal if the Gold Monster is running at high sensitivity levels. Once again I will warn that the specific settings I mention will vary under different ground conditions. Under the first scenario where I am trying to cover large areas I have found both manual sensitivity and auto sensitivity to be useful. Deciding between the two is as simple as knowing how variable the ground is. If the ground is relatively homogenous with minimal variation then manual sensitivity can work very well. If the ground gets too variable requiring constant burdensome adjustments of the sensitivity control to keep up, then going to auto sensitivity is more efficient. What does that mean in actual practice? Let's go over that but first I need to discuss the power up procedure. Much has been made of the necessity to hold the coil in the air as opposed to on the ground when the detector is first powered up. I will admit I am perhaps less stringent as regards that procedure. If I have any nearby electrical power sources, like a power line, cell tower, another detectorist nearby, etc. then I will raise the coil off the ground and point it directly at the tower or other person. This gives the GM1000 the best chance of "seeing" the interference during the few seconds frequency scan so possible interference can be eliminated or at least reduced as much as possible. However, in the interest of being completely honest, I have not found the Gold Monster at 45 kHz to be particularly sensitive to electrical interference and while in the middle of nowhere Nevada I often just turn the machine on and go about my business will no ill effects noted. The raise coil and point at nearest electrical source is a very good habit to develop, but in my experience at least it is not as critical for me as it appears to be for others. I am always going to use the deep seeking all metal mode whenever possible. This is not just because this mode goes deeper, but also because the coil is more forgiving about reporting items that are not centered well under the coil. The discrimination mode has the net effect of reducing the overall size of the detection area under the coil. This means that when running in the iron discrimination mode more care should be used to overlap sweeps. When my goal is covering ground that little bit of extra ground coverage per sweep does add up and all metal mode helps reduce the chance a nugget will be missed on any given sweep. The Gold Monster is noteworthy in that Minelab finally seems to have realized that the speaker actually needs to be loud enough to hear! I am quite enthralled by the boosted audio and the way the smallest targets pop even with my admittedly poor hearing. In fact, the Gold Monster bangs out so loud without headphones that I will often run a notch down from the maximum volume setting - it's so loud that in quiet locations it can be too loud. The volume control is also a secondary sensitivity control in a way, and so I usually run it full out. I do this as much to help create a forced threshold sound as to enhance my ability to hear small targets. More on that later. One of the greatest features on the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 is the automatic ground tracking. In my ground at least it is very efficient at effortlessly keeping up not only with ground conditions but in taking the edge off many hot rocks that would be problematic for other detectors. The beauty of this is that it eliminates the need to keep up with and make small adjustments to the ground balance control as would be the case with a detector that lacks an efficient automatic ground balance. I think most companies are equivalent when it comes to many features, but I do think when it comes to automatic ground tracking technology that Minelab has been and continues to be the industry leader. I was a "manual tuning only" diehard for a long time, but my experiences with the Minelab SDC 2300 in particular taught me to let go of that old thought process. The automatic ground tracking shifts the burden to the sensitivity control as the prime operational control on the GM1000. Minelab has positioned this control close enough to the center of the control panel that it is easily manipulated up or down with a thumb press by either left or right handed individuals. To summarize, I will raise the coil and point it at the nearest electrical source and then I will power the detector up and wait until it completes the frequency scan. The Gold Monster defaults to the last settings and so my machine will already be in all metal mode, but if not I will switch to that. From there I will go to manual sensitivity setting 7 and do a short walk around sweeping the coil over the ground. For me this means the coil is sliding lightly over the ground or no more than a few millimeters over it. So far for ground I have been frequenting the magic settings are 6 - 7 - 8. With the Gold Monster at full volume what I am seeking is a very minimal amount of ground feedback. These are very soft sounds that are quite unlike the hard edged pop of a genuine target. These sounds are created by the sensitivity being so high that ground noise is just starting to overcome the ground tracking ability to silence the ground. The problem with a silent search machine while in manual ground balance mode is that without a threshold you can end up leaving some performance on the table. If a setting of eight generates a little ground feedback, and you decide to go with 7 to make the machine completely silent, there is nothing wrong with that per se. However, if the ground changes and gets milder you may have the ability to run at a higher level of sensitivity, and without a change in the audio to alert you to a change in the ground, you will just leave the setting where it is. In my case if a setting of 7 is completely silent, I will bump to a setting of 8, and this almost always gives me that little ground feedback I want. If 7 is too noisy, I will drop to a setting of 6 and this will probably do the trick for me. The range between each setting seems about perfect for a person to settle on a range of three settings, too little, too much, and just right. For my areas 6 - 7 - 8 are the magic numbers. For worse ground the range may shift lower, to 5 - 6 - 7. Try and picture this. At sensitivity 7 I am just scanning along, coil lightly on the ground, with soft ground feedback, waiting for that hard little signal that even the tiniest target will generate. Then all the sudden the machine goes dead quiet. I have entered less mineralized ground. One thumb tap to sensitivity 8, and I get my "false threshold" back. Or, at a setting of 7 the machine gets noisier. Maybe a little alkali patch or more mineralized ground. A quick tap down to 6 reduces the feedback to my desired minimal level. What I am doing is letting the ground tracking do its job, and then just bumping the sensitivity up or down a notch to ride the ragged edge of best performance for the ground. "Gee Steve, sensitivity 6 - 7 - 8, aren't you giving up lots of depth running at 6 or 7 or anything less than 10"? My air testing...." A pox on air tests! They have uses but have little bearing on how to get the best performance out of a detector in the field. I do like to run my detectors hot and that does often mean with some ground noise, but it has to be kept within manageable limits. For the purposes of covering a lot of ground pushing the GM1000 to the edge is good but any farther and everything sounds like a target and knock sensitivity shoots up dramatically, especially at the hyper sensitivity settings of 9 and 10. The reality from what I have seen so far is that the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 at settings of 6 - 7 - 8 will match or exceed most detectors in its class. Let's save manual sensitivity 9 or 10 for my next detecting scenario up next. Again, a reminder that 6 - 7 - 8 is working well for me in moderate ground. In more mineralized ground it may be 5 - 6 - 7 or even 4 - 5 - 6. If you simply listen to the machine it will tell you where you need to be. Too high, too low - just right. I have actually found gold with the sensitivity as low as 3 when in some nasty salt encrusted ground. People seem so adverse to lowering sensitivity I often wonder how many would just give up before going that low. It just can't find gold set that low, can it? Yes it can. You either tame the ground or go home and even though depth is reduced you can still find gold a low sensitivity settings if that is what it takes to get stable performance in the worst ground. So what about auto sensitivity? Simple really. If you are finding that you are having to bump the sensitivity up and down too often (you will know when that is for you) then it is time for Auto sensitivity. Auto sensitivity is different than manual in that you can trust it to keep the detector at the optimum level even if running silent. In general Auto is the silent running mode whereas Auto+ usually introduces a slight amount of ground feedback at full volume. As I mentioned earlier the volume control acts as a secondary sensitivity filter and running it lower can reduce or eliminate slight ground noise while still allowing targets to sound off loud and clear. Auto+ works best for me in most places but if need be I can drop to simple Auto for more difficult variable ground where Auto+ may get too noisy. OK, we have been hunting as described above and get a target. What next? If you are digging everything, a good practice, then just recover that target. If it is faint, either bumping the manual sensitivity up two points or dropping out of Auto into a high manual setting can aid greatly in pinpointing and recovering the target. What about trash? Too much and I don't want to dig them all? I am hunting in all metal mode and I rely on the meter to make a dig or no dig decision. In some ways it is a probability thing. If a few sweeps over the target from various directions produce a series of "hard left" ferrous meter responses, the target is likely ferrous. My goal is to try and coax a non-ferrous response with the meter kicking to the right. Just one non-ferrous response raises the odds you have a non-ferrous target. Even then I might pass in a trashy area, but two or more non-ferrous responses and you had better just dig it. Small nuggets in mineralized soil are fighting the ferrous content of the soil itself and in bad ground the ferrous ground response often wins. If you are looking for gold look for reasons to dig targets, not reasons to walk away. The amount of trash will help determine just how aggressive or lax you decide to be in these dig or no-dig decisions. Running is disc mode should be reserved for situations where there is no other option. It may be needed to eliminate a certain hot rock response. Or there may be multiple trash targets per swing - you can't analyze them all. The iron discrimination mode can be a real lifesaver in these instances. However, consider the borderline nugget that will read ferrous seven out of ten swings. That means you only have a 30% chance on a single pass over the target of having the machine give an audio non-ferrous report while in iron discrimination mode. The odds are even worse if you are not perfectly over the target, a bit too high, or swinging a little too fast. If the detector decides ferrous on that first pass, you get no sound and go right by, never knowing it was there. This is where detectors with a ferrous tone have the advantage in alerting you to every target so you can double or triple check. With a silent rejection system you get just one chance at the target and if the detector is wrong, the nugget is missed. Minelab Gold Monster 1000 Iron Discrimination Mode Versus All Metal Mode All metal is more forgiving in multiple ways, but mostly by alerting you to every target, allowing you to stop, get the coil lower if need be, slow the sweep, change the angle, etc. all with the goal of trying to coax a non-ferrous response from the target. I highly recommend that if you use discrimination you use it sparingly and conservatively, and only go to full blown iron disc mode it you must. We all have a different threshold for when that will be but rest assured hot rocks or thick trash will pretty much force the issue. That sure sounds complicated! In practice, hunting at sensitivity 6, I am going to get a signal. If it is faint, I will bump the sensitivity a couple notches now that I am on target. Too hot for general hunting but fine for spot checks. The target response will enhance, giving much surer results on the discrimination meter, and allowing for easier pinpointing and recovery. Target in pouch, sensitivity back down two notches and I am on my way again. For extreme ground JP has a bit more complicated method for getting back into the hunt as described here. For me personally hunting in moderate ground simply going back to my base sensitivity setting and swinging away is working fine. Again however, I am discussing just general detecting at this point, not getting the best and finest edge on the performance. Which leads me to.... ...that 20 foot by 20 foot spot I want to clean out. The 5" coil has an edge on the really tiny gold and in more mineralized ground in particular it "sees" less ground and is the coil of choice for cleanup duty. In moderate ground I run the Monster at manual sensitivity 10 and much like running my GPZ 7000 fully maxed out with Steve's Insanely Hot Settings I tame the machine strictly through coil control. This means moving at a crawl, and because at sensitivity 9 and especially 10 some knock sensitivity is introduced, I employ my magical ability to keep a coil 1 mm off the ground while never touching anything. In severe ground sensitivity 9 or 10 may not be attainable at all, and as always I defer to JP and his operating procedures for dealing with really bad ground. But for my milder ground I can crank the GM1000 all the way up and even with the 10" coil hit gold down to around 1/10th grain and with the 5" coil smaller yet. Again, extreme coil control is the answer here but the catch is that you are never going to cover much ground in a day doing this. If covering ground is the goal, stick with more stable settings. But if you want to chase flyspecks (they do add up) then be very patient while working the coil and the Minelab Gold Monster is pretty amazing in what it can do. I do hope this helps somebody somewhere. Again, all I am doing is telling you what I am doing and what is working for me. If you prefer to do something different by all means - I am not trying to say these settings are the "best settings" as in my opinion there simply is no such thing. The best settings for my wife would probably be Auto sensitivity while in disc mode. "Here honey, swing this closely over the ground, and if it goes beep, dig it up." Different ground and different experience levels mean different settings. Never be afraid to experiment. If you only use settings you find on a website and never experiment yourself you will never truly learn any detector and what works best for your circumstances. Good luck out there and above all, have fun! More Information On the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 Sensitivity Settings Photo below: Some gold I just found, 4.9 grams total. The top four nuggets were found with the GPZ 7000 (largest nugget 2.2 grams) and the bottom nine with the Gold Monster 1000 (smallest flake ?? gram) using the methods described above.

So the pup and I headed out to some of my favorite bench areas above the creek; good thing I checked the depth of the water at the crossing before trying to take the side x side through like I normally did in previous years....mid-thigh high, so carried gear and pup to other side and hiked just under a mile to first site: A granite nob that's been hit by myself and several friends the past couple seasons, but it still keeps squeaking out little tiddlers: Got a couple there, then moved one to another spot where several more were found after moving some of the old-timers hand-stackings: Don't need a gym membership when you do this as a hobby! :-) Anyway, hit a few more areas with some success, but the creme de la creme (or should I say, creme de la crumb?) was this area I dug for hours and cleaned out at least 25 tiny bits....what fun the Monster was having! (To better get in under the roots etc, the Goldbug2 would have been better, but we managed) The next day and a half hit a couple more spots and ended up with this for my Bench Tour Total.....a lot of work(i.e. fun) for 1.4g lol! Pup and I had a great few days at the cabin.....but it's time to get the zed and 2300 out again, so off to California later this week! Cheers and Happy Hunting! p.s. kiwijw, I was inspired by your posts! :-)

Decided to take the Monster out from under the bed and up into the hills for a couple hours today. Used JP's recommended procedures outlined in his Minelab blog and it worked very well. Also taped the coil lead of the 5-inch coil to the shaft very close to the the coil as posted elsewhere on the forum. While it didn't completely eliminate the falsing that occurs in max sensitivity when bumping the coil, it was greatly improved. Altogether, the Monster located a dozen flakes of gold this time out. The total weight is 2.5 grains, or 0.2 of a gram.

Found the pinpointer is not up to it, gave the Deus a go but it interfered (coil being on seeking RC) with the Z now will the Monster save digging those Z19 holes so big.

Having used the GM now for 2 months on the Eastern goldfields in oz I think I can give a fair assessment of its performance so far , The machine is always set up as per JP, s preffered method and in my areas the sensitivity is left in auto normal as auto plus is just a bit noisy. Auto normal allows those smaller signals to stand out without the background falsing. Some of the YouTube videos of prospectors in oz pitching the GM against the SD show the operators using the monster with full sensitivity and scrubbing the ground trying to compete on performance and understandably suffering accordingly . As has been stated on this forum don,t try and turn the detector into something it's not ,instead trust the manufacturers have designed the machine to reach its full potential in auto mode . let's face it we wouldn't, buy a new car then rip the computer out and replace it with points and distributor. The GM is a vlf machine and as such suffers the same joys and pitfalls of the family it was spawned from . luckily we can use that knowledge to trust that the charecteristics we have learnt on previous machines still hold true for the monster. This brings me to the addition of the probability meter, that on this machine is a left or right LCD bar graph that shows ferrous to the left and non ferrous to the right ( nail or gold bar ) As on any vlf we know that as the machine has to balance ground noise effectiveness of the discriminator diminishes , so operators in lightly mineralised areas can put more emphasis on the accuracy of their discriminators than those in heavily mineralised areas like those in some parts of oz. I have found recently while detecting over ground that could be described as ancient high plateau gold deposits ( cemented river sand and quartz pebbles ) that my machine could easily find and give a good clean signal on a 2 gram nugget buried at 16 centimetres ( (about 6 inches) , but the discriminator was showing always to the left on the meter telling me it was junk , only after the piece was dug up and placed on the surface and waved within a few centimetres of the nugget was it showing as gold , for those in the states that's about 1 inch . So once again use your knowledge on vlf sound identifying methods for discrimination if you have prior experience with one ,and if your a first time buyer dig everything and till you learn the art yourself. Generally good signals give a nice clean chirp while the rusty iron items give a multiple or yawn type noise . As I say dig all if uncertain . So to sum up trust the machine to run in auto the way it was designed and in Oz stay on the conservative sensitivity setting until your confident you can run it higher without falsing ,or your gridding a rich area and can put up with it. Don't trust the discrimination , if it sounds good "DIG". The rechargeable battery lasts for about 2 full days of detecting that's great for weekenders . The shaft does tend to turn loose and is the reason some just buy a wooden broom handle as a replacement , I have found in oz our wood weighs the same as the supplied shaft. some people have mentioned coil falsing when knocked , however I have found this happen only when using really high sensitivity levels or when hitting large rocks . don't put the battery in the wrong way as it would be easy to break the the catches on the battery compartment lid , Enjoy your Gold Monster and above all persevere , be realistic and above all have fun on the goldfields.